The Session #20: German tradition lives

This is my contribution to The Session #20, Beer and Memories, hosted by the Bathtub Brewery. Head there for a complete recap.

Zoigl brewery, NeuhausSchafferhof-Zoigl.

I drank it twice today, and I may never have it again. But if I do taste it I will be instantly back in Neuhaus, located in a bit of northern Bavaria known as the Oberfplaz. “Nobody in Germany comes here,” a Munich resident told us at the Teicher, run by the Otto Punzmann family, where we had another Zoigl beer. We were drinking, he explained, in an area lost to many Germans, between the north and Bavaria, between Prague and and the more prosperous west.

A good place to be on German Reunification Day, a national holiday and the only day of the year all the Zoigl breweries of Neuhaus (plus a few others – seven different in town, more if you wanted to drive a few miles) pour their beers. What the blank is Zoigl? Not a style, thank goodness. But beer from a community brewery that’s located in Neuhaus a short walk from the house breweries where the beer ferments, is lagered and served.

During the rest of the year each house brewery takes its own turn serving beer one weekend a month, usually Friday through Monday. In 2007 the breweries began what could turn into something wonderful. They all open on a single day.

Apparently the first round was a success, because sometime before 6 o’clock in the morning in New York (noon here) we pulled into the village of Neuhaus and saw cars lined up to the edge of town. The first brewery serving Zoigl was right ahead, the community brewhouse around the corner.

Each house brewery makes a beer to is own recipe. Schafferhof was the first we had, and our favorite, as if that matters. By chance it was our first, by design our last &#151 where we enjoyed it with a feast that cost us €11.60 (including beer) and would have been at least three times that on Munich.

The 20-kilometer drive back to our pension was as spectacular as the trip up from southwest of Regensburg on Thursday. As was the journey to Neuhaus in the morning. I should have stopped when we left Neuhaus, and might have were it not for a Mercedes looming in the rear view mirror, to take a picture. The hills were laid out below us in layers, two different villages with churches at their center surrounded by bright green fields and dark green trees.

Fall has arrived, but gently. Yellow and red leaves blend with a lot of green, and the red flowers in planters on the second and third stories of white washed houses perfectly complement red tile roofs.

That’s what I’ll remember should I come across a beer that reminds me of Schafferhof Zoigl.

But back to that conversation at the Teicher. The Munich resident made it clear why some Germans embrace Zoigl when I asked him why he decided to come to Neuhaus — he and 10 friends made the journey via train. He looked around the room, beer and and conversation brimming everywhere.

“This is tradition,” he said.

 

What do you call a Russian Pilsner Urquell?

If you’ve already read Evan Rail’s “Pilsner Urquell vs. Pilsner Urquell vs. Pilsner Urquell” post good for you. If not, then don’t bother with anything else. Go there now.

(I apologize that I’m getting to this more than a week after it was posted. I’m now resigned to the fact I’ll be constantly behind until December when we return to the States, perhaps longer.)

Evan examines Pilsner Urquell’s decision to brew other “Pilsner Urquell” beers in foreign countries.

So I asked why, if they were brewing beer elsewhere, those beers had to have the same name. The answer I received was that it was their brand.

“It’s a brand, like Volkswagen,” said head brewmaster Jan Hlavacek. “Volkswagen is made all over the world. It’s still called Volkswagen.”

This is important.

 

Monday musing: Hands on still matters in brewing

(No, I haven’t gone bonkers. This was written Monday, so I decided to stick with my usual theme even though I’m not able to post it until today – Thursday. I went ahead and added links to stories to read that I came across today.)

Steenberge brewhouse

Last week during a delightful dinner in a small bistro along Quai de Valmy in Paris, Sierra posed this question: “Is food better from a small kitchen than a big one?”

She asked because the kitchen at Roele Deux Carottes is quite small, and because she recently watched a few cooking shows on BBC. On those she’s seen several spectacularly presented dishes that generally come from large kitchens with lots of personnel to prepare them. A great conversation followed, but I’ll spare you the transcript. The rather obvious comparisons to brewery size and beer quality never came up, but I already knew I’d be writing about it here.

Instead, because the bistro also offered wi-fi and I was able to download a boatload of blog entries (for those offering text rss feeds, thank you), including one from Andy Crouch headlined “The Myth of Handcrafting . . .” Nice piece that originally appeared in Beer Advocate magazine, so pardon me if it is old to you.

“Handcrafted” does not translate perfectly to kitchen/brewery size, but Andy’s column turned my thinking another direction. Go read it, and if you don’t come back I’ll forgive you. However I do have a couple of niggles with it:

* Many of the cutting edge beers that Beer Advocates covet are handcrafted, that is touched each step of production by a human being we hold accountable (and consumers call by first name – “Ron, Tomme, Adam, Vinnie” and all the other names you know well).

* He also writes, “That a brewer lugging fifty pound bags of grain has been replaced by a computer nerd watching the sparge represented in animation on a glowing screen is a positive thing for everyone involved.”

No, brewers haven’ been replaced by computer nerds — when geeks are in charge of our beer we’re (insert your own expletive verb) — but their job descriptions have changed.

Week before last sales manager Jef Versele showed off the terminals (picture above) that run the brewhouse at Brouwerij Van Steenberge in Ertvelde, Belgium. He made it clear they are a tool, their usefulness is limited by a brewer’s own skills. “The problem is when they push the buttons because the computer tells them to,” he said. “You should know why. When they don’t know it makes me mad.”

He would be happy watching Andy Farrell man the screen at Bell’s Brewery in Michigan. “The three shift managers have more than 30 years brewing experience,” Gary Nicholas, director of quality control, explained in July. “The best use of their time is not being able to read a clock (to open a valve or add another ingredient).”

Farrell illustrated what he does when the system spots a problem. He popped open a screen that showed a list of recent alarms. Some were false; for some the solution was obvious but for others a decision had to made. Farrell took action at the keyboard, but if he had to he could walk over to the brewhouse and fix almost any problem with his hands. Instead he touches the necessary valves using a mouse.

The week before New Glarus Brewing co-founder Dan Carey was even more emphatic. Carey is still a boots-on guy, happiest when he is in his Wisconsin brewhouse, even though he no longer has to clean filters by hand (as he was first time we visited long ago).

“The automation does not mean you push a button and walk away,” he said. “I’d say it takes more talent and skill to operate an automated brewery.”

This is evidence that supports what Couch has written, so don’t think I am beating up on him. I agree we really shouldn’t describe the bulk of the volume of what’s called “craft” beer as handcrafted, nor should we be bothered it is not.

However handcrafted is part of the culture of the breweries where those beers are made. If they lose that then their beer will suffer.

Stuff you should read

Boak and Bailey provide a first hand reports from London’s upscale Beer Exposed. Bottom line: “Overall, a success, we think. I hope there’s another one next year with the wrinkles ironed out. If there is, we might well get a bunch of our ‘not that fussed about beer’ friends and take them along.”

– Wine writer Steve Heimoff reacts to the notion that beer might be the new wine after seeing the suggestion posed in the Atlanta Constitution. “Beer and wine have always been on opposite sides of the great divide in America’s social wars,” according to Heimoff. You know where I stand: Beer is not the new wine.

– Sorry to make it two wine links, but this one (and the comments) just made me giggle: Is Yellow Tail a “gateway” wine?